In the passage On the Subway by Sharon Olds, the author discusses two worlds concerning race and white supremacy. She is sitting across from an African-American person who impresses a negative persona upon her. She is either frightened or in power. She does not know what his intentions are. The shifts in the poem indicate her indecisiveness to his presence: “’I don’t know if I am in his power —he could take my coat so easily, my briefcase, my life’” (Olds). The person on the opposite of her could be someone who is innocent, but because of his race, he is judged based on his skin color. She is assuming the worst, but hoping for the best in different areas of the poem. She brings up his facade like a criminal before any action was taken by him. …show more content…
She is nervous and her mind escapes into a whole trance of stereotypical ideas. Raising a convincing notion that she is not fond to this other race as she says “’He has the casual cold look of a mugger’” (Olds). The term casual in this sentence seems to refer to his looks, and his skin. If casual mugger’s look like he does, then does this incite racism? She also addresses the supremacy portion in a statement, “’there is no way to know how easy this white skin makes my life, this life he could take so easily and break across his knee like a stick the way his own back is being broken’” (Olds). As this does address the white lady’s life and how it is easier for her to be successful because of her race, this also addresses the slavery era with the words “’the way his own back is being broken’” (Olds). And this moreover speaks truth about the evident disadvantages African-American men and women have had in history in terms of the Martin Luther King Jr. time period as well as the first colonization’s from Africa that distributed slaves among settlers in the beginning formation of